Opinion: Is Al Qaeda Coming to a City Near You?

This transcript has been automatically generated and may not be 100% accurate.

... I ... I ... the receipt of the Westgate mall in Kenya has finally ended ... after many days of terror in more than sixty people killed that's the most current account ... got American Enterprise Institute senior analyst Katherine Zimmerman a ... twenty me now from Washington Catherine's ... is out of bond a problem that just confined to East Africa or should we be worried about this group ... B on those borders ... currently is only confined to East Africa it doesn't have the capabilities to strike ... farther away from that ... but we need to remember that other al Qaeda groups ... have had that assessment ... and the stock the US homeland with surprise ... like Dell cut in the opinion ... okay I won't play you a clip from present Obama ... I do is send ... a very similar phrase here multiple times let's let's roll that I wanna get your reaction ... the ... the survey ... the the the ... this is the the uh uh uh ... so after an al Qaeda has been decimated in London Tuesday again ... we have this Westgate attack I ... e is this group really on the run ... know of a very strong right now ... the group in Pakistan has certainly been ... defeated in the sense that it's not capable of carrying out attacks ... but I've had a strong and Somalia ... in yen and it's growing in Syria its stock in Iraq ... looking at a very significant problem here for the United States is sick too far fetched to say then given that the list of countries used to sell and ... then archive it is actually stronger today than it was on nine eleven ... I don't think it's the price ... starts to say that I was stronger in different ways ... it is much more interconnected than it was when stock prices I love them ... and they hurt this much more resilient having learned and adapted the ears cook it but ... how is that possible given all of these drone strikes given all the money that we've thrown at this problem I mean ... what are the lessons here where we gone wrong ... well I started to fight these groups in Yemen and Somalia and elsewhere has really been one that relies heavily on local partners ... and that's been problematic for many reasons but it comes down to in Somalia ... is that those partners ... weren't capable and actually pushing us about out of the reasons that it's an and defeating and the way that we needed it to be a ... serious comeback in a stronger it different for and what is the message the al should Bob was trying to send with this attack ... what it's doing it's it's un it very clear message to China which is fighting in Somalia ... against pursuing that option ... but it's also a signal of its its intent to join in the global jihad ... it started to talk more about the global battlefield ... and that's rhetoric that very reminiscent of the message that Osama bin Laden's sons gets very disturbing we got lesson and laughed ... he had an op ed in today's Wall Street Journal we talked about recruitment ... here in America ... I it how significant is that threat in could we see Alpine our itself coming to a senior US ... I don't think that we're going see the CIA sell growing in the United States ... the concern here is really one of the individuals who decide not to travel abroad ... the deciding set to carry out attacks in the United States ... we've seen how easy it is to buy a gun ... and walked into an un protected area ... and and murder civilians ... and not something that should be of great concern for a long Forstmann community here in the state's global war on terror it continues American Enterprise Institute senior analyst Katherine Zimmerman ... thank you so much for joining us